Wacom pen tablet for photographer Perry Zonneveld : The Wedding Day a day full of emotion for any bridal couple. To keep as many memories as possible for the years to come, pictures taken by a professional photographer are mandatory for most people. And the wedding album is a treasury to be looked at from time to time. Photographer Perry Zonneveld is one of the photographers helping couples to maintain this very special day. In Veenendaal, the Netherlands, Perry has his own photo studio where he works for corporate as well as private customers, but wedding photography takes up most of his time. An important part of his equipment, besides the camera and his computer, is his Wacom Intuos3 A5 wide Pen Tablet.

Wedding Photography Perry Zonneveld
Perry Zonneveld became a professional photographer after having visited a hotel and management school in the Netherlands first. But soon he discovered that photography was more in his range of interest. Thus, he started as a hobby photographer first, but then took it really seriously and went to the Fotovakschool for three years to become a professional photographer. In 1996, he started his own shop, mainly selling cameras and equipment, but also exhibiting his photos. Thus, more and more people became interested in his work and he got assignments to do shootings, resulting in his own studio in 1997. Perry is an Associate of the Dutch Institute of Professional Photography (DIPP), aiming for a Fellowship in 2006. His attitude, making him an ideal photographer especially for wedding photography, is to express emotions with his pictures.
Wacom pen tablet for photographer Perry Zonneveld

Wacom Intuos pen tablet - Adobe Photoshop
Since 2003, Perry has been working fully digital, mainly using Adobe Photoshop to edit his pictures. With his switch to digital photography, Perry spent more and more time working at the computer using his mouse. Soon, he got problems when his wrist started to hurt. In 2004, he saw a presentation of Wacom’s Intuos3 pen tablet at a DIPP event and bought one. “I thought that this would be an ergonomic alternative to the mouse which could also add additional benefits to my daily work as a professional photographer.” Today, he uses the Intuos3 A5 wide in a dual-monitor set-up in his studio and has completely said good-bye to the mouse.

Photographer Perry Zonneveld - Wedding Albums
Although Perry Zonneveld originally bought the Intuos3 mainly for ergonomic reasons, he soon discovered that its features really help him to make his work much faster and more convenient. For the creation of wedding albums he mainly has to do some basic retouching and image improvements as a lot of photographers need to do day by day. He removes spots, wrinkles or impurities of the bride or groom. Sometimes he lightens up the eyes making them look more shiny, to add more emotions to a person.

Wacom Intuos3 pen tablet - Quality
“Small, mainly very detailed changes are crucial for me, as they add to the picture’s quality. It might be changes that are not very obvious, but for me as a professional photographer they add very important value to the quality and appearance of the whole image. With the pen tablet I can do this in a quick and ergonomic way.” Other tasks that are frequently done is cutting images and dragging them into a certain template for the wedding album. This is standard work for most photographers, which, if it had to be done with the mouse, would be much more time consuming.

Adobe Photoshop - Wacom ExpressKeys and Touch Strip
Besides the ergonomic advantages, which Perry doesn’t get tired to stress, the ExpressKeys and Touch Strip integrated in the tablet are very convenient for him. He programmed the Keys with different functions he commonly uses in Adobe Photoshop. This makes work much quicker as he doesn’t have to reach for the keyboard to access the specific functions. Another aspect that wasn’t obvious to him in the first place, but now holds an important role is the pressure sensitivity of the pen. Especially with the brush tool which he uses for example to blur or darken parts of an image, it is just like painting directly into the image, applying more blur or shadow.

Wacom Pen Tablet - Specific Brush
Or, if he uses the spot healing brush tool to smoothen the skin of the bride for example, it is very easily done with the pen: the harder he presses the pen onto the tablet, the more he applies the specific brush on the image’s mask layer. Thus, retouching of the wedding images becomes very intuitive and transitions become natural and smooth. “If I had to do this with a mouse, I would have to work with a constant brush size and additionally I would have to constantly click to apply the chosen brush. With the pen, I can just paint it on.”

Photographer Perry Zonneveld - Freehand Work
Perry Zonneveld estimates that working with digital images has become about 20 per cent faster with the tablet. Also, his freehand work is much more intuitive, e.g. when selecting parts of pictures with the lasso tool and integrating them into the wedding album. Even if his original intention of buying the Intuos3 was not related to saving time or obtaining an even better quality in picture editing, these have become important factors to him. Summing up his experiences with the Intuos3, Perry Zonneveld doesn’t want to miss it any more: “The Intuos3 is the essential tool to fine tune my images quickly and conveniently. For me, especially the ergonomic advantages are crucial. Since I switched from analogue to digital as a professional photographer, I have to spend a lot of time at the computer. If I couldn’t do that anymore, I wouldn’t be able to earn money for living.”